GOP eyes 34-year-old first African American Speaker of the House in Oklahoma

A little-known conservative, who’s 34 years old, African-American and just sworn in as Speaker of the House in Oklahoma is making lots of noise on the GOP radar.

Republican T.W. Shannon is the first African-American in that state to ever hold the position.

He’s Republican. African-American and he’s young–at a time when the GOP is worried about its future.

“Shannon speaks and acts like a mainstream modern conservative Republican — and, to some extent, that’s the point of his role in history,” Patrick B. McGuigan writes in Watchdog.org. “Shannon’s elevation to the top job in the ‘people’s house’ is the latest chapter in a bipartisan story of progress leavened with injustice, leavened still more with hope and finally renewed in a fresh era of opportunity.”

T.W. Shannon is a 6th generation Oklahoman and 3rd generation Lawtonian. Shannon is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and a former Congressional staffer who worked for U.S. Representatives J.C. Watts and Tom Cole.

What got him elected as Speaker is his ability to relate to the rank-and-file members in the Oklahoma House. GOP leadership in the state believe he can also relate to the public on a national stage.

“We’re trying to get Speaker Shannon on the surrogate list with the RNC to be speaking in other states and helping them with a more diverse Republican outreach in their states,” Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman Matt Pinnell tells NewsOK.com.

Shannon himself has been laying the ground work–intentionally or not.

He caught some eyes with an October, 2012 editorial in the Oklahoma Gazette where he compared the national debt to the iceberg that sank the Titanic.